PHP and Laravel: Building Modern Web Applications

Modern PHP: Beyond the Legacy

PHP 8+ brought significant language improvements: typed properties, named arguments, attributes, match expressions, and nullsafe operators. Combined with Laravel's framework features, modern PHP is a highly productive language for web development. PHP remains unmatched for shared hosting deployments and has deep integration with web infrastructure (Apache, Nginx). A single PHP file can serve a request without compilation — development velocity is exceptional.

namespace App\Controllers;

use App\Models\Product;

class ProductController {
    public function index() {
        $products = Product::all();
        return view('products.index', compact('products'));
    }

    public function show(Product $product) {
        return view('products.show', compact('product'));
    }
}

Eloquent: An Elegant ORM

Laravel's Eloquent ORM is one of the most intuitive database abstraction layers available. It combines expressiveness with safety through query builders and relationship management. Eloquent automatically handles common patterns like eager loading to prevent N+1 queries, relationship constraints, and model callbacks.

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class Product extends Model {
    protected \$fillable = ['name', 'price', 'category_id'];

    public function category() {
        return \$this->belongsTo(Category::class);
    }

    public function reviews() {
        return \$this->hasMany(Review::class);
    }

    public function scopeActive(\$query) {
        return \$query->where('active', true);
    }
}

Laravel's Feature-Rich Ecosystem

Laravel includes authentication (with scaffolding), authorization (policies), validation, middleware, task scheduling, queues, cache, sessions, and file storage out of the box. Laravel Mix (or Vite integration) handles frontend asset compilation. Artisan, the command-line tool, generates boilerplate and runs migrations. This comprehensive toolkit means fewer decisions and faster development compared to Flask-like frameworks.

• Built-in authentication with preset UI scaffolds (Breeze, Jetstream)
• Authorization policies for fine-grained access control
• Eloquent relationships: one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-many, polymorphic
• Job queues for background processing (Redis, SQS, RabbitMQ)
• Task scheduling for cron-like operations without cron

Scaling Laravel Applications

Laravel scales through horizontal deployment: stateless applications running behind load balancers. Laravel Horizon monitors job queues, while Laravel Telescope provides debugging and profiling. For real-time features, Laravel Reverb provides WebSocket support. Database optimization, caching layers (Redis), and CDN distribution follow standard web architecture patterns. Laravel's shared hosting origins mean it's designed for simple deployment — no container orchestration required.

Laravel vs Other Backend Frameworks

Compared to Django, Laravel offers similar batteries-included philosophy with different syntax and ecosystem. Compared to FastAPI, Laravel's routing and ORM are more opinionated but require no async complexity. Laravel excels for server-rendered applications with traditional databases and simple deployment requirements. FastAPI wins for high-concurrency microservices. Django wins for data-heavy applications with complex admin interfaces.

• Choose Laravel for rapid development and shared hosting deployment
• Use it when your team values developer experience and ecosystem maturity
• Consider alternatives if you need extreme performance for high-concurrency APIs
• Laravel's strength is full-stack web applications, not headless APIs

Building Modern Applications with Laravel

Modern Laravel applications pair the framework with frontend tools: Inertia.js for reactive server-rendered interfaces combining Laravel backends with Vue/React frontends, or build a separate SPA with your API. Livewire provides real-time interactivity without JavaScript. Docker containerization is standard for local development and deployment. Laravel Sail provides a Docker development environment requiring only Docker and PHP.

FROM php:8.2-fpm
WORKDIR /var/www/html

COPY . .
RUN composer install

EXPOSE 9000
CMD ["php-fpm"]